


drifting (let's take a ride)

by ZombieBabs



Series: Search for Coralee (Crossover 'Verse) [3]
Category: The Black Tapes Podcast, The Lift
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Choices, Crossover, F/M, Family, Past Relationship(s), Visions
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-10
Updated: 2016-06-10
Packaged: 2018-07-14 03:46:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,854
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7151768
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ZombieBabs/pseuds/ZombieBabs
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Strand finds himself in Victoria's lift, faced with a choice. </p><p>“A choice, Dr. Strand. Everyone who comes here, good or bad, is offered a choice. The choices of the past, those that brought you here, don’t matter. What you chose here, however, will set your fate.”</p><p>He shakes his head. “I don’t believe in fate.”</p><p>Victoria laughs, full of child-like glee. She looks up at him with preternaturally green eyes, waves a chiding finger at him. “You can’t run from it forever.”</p><p>*Edited 7.28.17</p>
            </blockquote>





	drifting (let's take a ride)

“You’re drifting,” says the little girl standing beside him. 

He looks at her, a girl only eight or nine years old. Wearing a faded purple dress with perfect blonde ringlets tied into pigtails, she looks like a doll--eerily similar to one Coralee bought Charlie for her fifth birthday.

The doll had a ceramic face, painted like a cherub. Charlie cried for days after knocking it from a shelf, smashing the angelic face into slivers of glass.

“You’re drifting.” The little girl says again, with great patience.

“Oh,” he says. He blinks in the near darkness, lit only by a green light held in the girl’s hand. Or, not a light, at all, but an old-fashioned music box, with green light bleeding out of it into the enclosed space. “Where are we?”

The girl giggles. She holds out her hand for him to shake. He takes it, her grip stronger than he expects. “I’m Victoria. This is my lift.”

Strand examines the space more closely. It is, in fact, an elevator. A door stands outlined in the darkness with a panel on the wall alongside it. Nine buttons for nine stories.

“You’re Richard Strand. Dr. Richard Strand, I should say." Victoria cocks her head to the side. "Do you have a stethoscope?”

He shakes his head, but everything remains fuzzy. Hazy. He doesn’t remember giving the girl his name. He doesn’t remember how he came to be in the elevator, in the first place. “I’m not that kind of doctor.”

Victoria pouts.

He was never able to deny Charlie anything when she made a face like that. It drove Coralee crazy.

Strand pats his sides, where he finds a mostly in-tact granola bar shoved into his jeans. A not-so-subtle suggestion from Alex to eat. Strand holds it out to Victoria, the only peace offering he can think of.

Victoria looks at him, her gaze far too knowing for someone her age. She pushes the hand holding the bar back toward him. “You keep it. I have enough jelly babies to last me the next month!”

Strand returns the granola bar to his pocket.

Jelly babies? Lift? With Victoria's softly accented English, could he be overseas? Can the sluggishness overtaking him be blamed on jet lag? "Are we in Europe? I don't remember--I don't remember--" 

He can't remember anything. His mind is a fog.

“I’m afraid not,” Victoria says. She smiles, hiding a flash of pain behind rows of tiny teeth. “This building is lost. Like you, Dr. Strand.”

Something about her, the otherworldliness of her, perhaps, prompts him to ask. “Are you lost, Victoria?”

"Not as lost as some. I live here. I've _always_ lived here.

“Alone?” Strand asks, although he knows it doesn’t make sense. The child must have parents, somewhere.

Ringlets and faded ribbons bounce as she shakes her head. “Not always. Sometimes I have guests.”

The elevator chimes and the doors slide open. Strand didn't see Victoria press any of the buttons, hadn’t even felt the car moving.

“Sixth story,” Victoria says. “This is your floor.”

Beyond the elevator doors is darkness. His eyes strain, at first, to see beyond the glow of Victoria’s music box, but it proves impossible. “What will I find here?”

“A choice, Dr. Strand. Everyone who comes to this place, good or bad, is offered a choice. The choices of the past, those that brought you here, don’t matter. What you chose here, however, will set your fate.”

Strand shakes his head. “I don’t believe in fate.”

Victoria laughs, full of child-like glee. She looks up at him with preternaturally green eyes, waves a chiding finger at him. “You can’t run from it forever.”

Strand looks into the darkness. A tiny hand slip into his. When he looks down, Victoria gives him a reassuring smile.

He steps out of the elevator. Instantly, like a switch has been pulled, lights illuminate the long hallway stretching out before him. Worn wallpaper curls away from the wall. Parts of the ceiling have come down, exposing old electric wiring. Strand's footsteps leave a trail in the thick layer of dust obscuring what was once red and gold carpeting.

Strand walks down the hallway, unsure if Victoria is leading him or if his feet know the way. They stop at a door, nondescript, without any identifying numbers or marks. Strand knows, however, this is the door he’s meant to open.

Raising his free arm, he raps at the splintered door.

“You don’t have to knock, silly,” Victoria says. “This is _your_ door.”

Strand lays his hand on the brass handle, the curve of it familiar. It _is_ his door, the door to his bedroom, in his house, the one he shared so long ago with Coralee. The handle moves and without further thought, Strand lets the door swing open. He steps inside, Victoria in tow.

Coralee sits on the bed, playing pat-a-cake with Charlie.

Charlie squeals when she sees him. She jumps off the bed and runs to him, enveloping his legs in a hug. “Daddy!”

Kneeling down, he scoops his daughter into his arms and holds her close. Her hair is damp after her bath. It sticks to his cheek when he lays his head on the top of hers. “There’s my girl.”

He can't have been gone long, but he's filled with the strangest mixture of grief and longing. He closes his eyes against it and breathes in the scent of Charlie's favorite bubblegum soap.

He opens his eyes to see Victoria, tears in her eyes.

“Girls,” he corrects, and opens his arms to accommodate the little blonde. How could he have forgotten Victoria?

Victoria sniffles and tucks herself into the embrace along with her sister.

“And where’s my hug?” Coralee asks. She puts her hands on her hips, looking at him with a stern expression, betrayed by the teasing in her eyes.

He stands up, depositing both girls on the bed.

“Coralee." Strand leans over her, his hand cradling her face, thumb moving along her jaw. He kisses her, his lips lingering despite the screams of the children.

“Ew,” Charlie says, sticking out her tongue.

“Cooties!” Victoria says, then turns to Charlie and makes a face.

Strand grins into the kiss, finally breaking it. He settles down beside his wife. Once again the grief and longing overtake him. How long has it been since they last sat together like this? “I missed you.”

Her arms wrap around his waist, nose nuzzling in the crook of his neck and shoulder. “You haven’t been gone that long.”

Something about those words ring hollow and untrue. If he lets himself, he can see flashing red and blue lights, police tape, and the stretch of long, lonely decades.

But Coralee has never once lied to him, so the memories must not be memories at all.

Turning his head, Strand's lips find the top of her head. “Every moment I’m not by your side is like an eternity.”

Coralee laughs and swats blindly at his arm. “Oh, please.”

He kisses her again, just because he can, tilting her chin up with a finger so he can find her mouth with his own, slotting them together like they belong that way, two matching pieces of a puzzle. 

“Seriously,” Coralee says, when they pull away. “You spend too much time at the office.”

Strand sighs, pulls his wife closer to him. “I know.”

“We have enough money,” she says. “Howard left us more than we could ever need. You don’t need to work.”

He smiles. Coralee is right. She usually is. “You could have told me you wanted a trophy husband before you married me.”

He tickles at the sensitive place on her ribs, enjoying the way she squeals. “I would have said yes.”

“The children want to see their father,” she continues, as soon as she catches her breath. “ _I_ want to see their father.”

“Think of all the trouble the four of us could get into,” he says. He smiles at the girls. “What do you say? Should your father quit his job to stay at home with you?”

Charlie jumps up on the bed, her arms in the air. “Forever?”

"For--"

Victoria looks at him, her face a blank mask, glowing green eyes expectant.

Coralee frowns. She sits upright. “Richard? What’s wrong?”

The smile falls from Strand’s face. He closes his eyes as he comes to the realization. “This isn’t real.”

Green flashes behind his closed eyes. The world tumbles out from underneath him.

He stumbles as he lands. When he opens his eyes, he and Victoria are in the elevator again.

“You always wanted a family,” Victoria says, beside him once more. “You wanted to be different from your own father, to be there for your wife and child, but you found yourself slipping back into the work. That’s why you didn’t want to have another child, because some part of you felt like you already failed--in your marriage to Coralee and as a father to Charlie."

Strand says nothing.

"You could have stayed there," Victoria says. "In that room, with the people you love.”

The question is clear in Victoria's green eyes. Why didn't he stay? Why didn't he take the opportunity given to him?

He sighs. “It wouldn’t have been real.”

Victoria looks down. Her fingers play with her music box, once again held in her hands. “It would have felt real.”

“That’s not quite the same thing.”

“Isn’t it?” Victoria asks.

He can still feel the warmth where Coralee pressed against him. He can still hear Charlie’s little laugh.

Strand shakes his head.

Victoria smiles. He knows, without her saying anything, she's proud of him. Proud of his choice.

“Take me home, Victoria,” Strand says. He tugs at one of her ringlets, making her laugh.

The elevator doors slide closed and with a lurch he finds himself in a different place altogether. 

Alex Reagan stands in front of him, on tiptoe, waving her hand in front of his face. “Uh, Dr. Strand?”

Strand blinks and catches Alex’s hand. He looks all around, but there is no sign of his companion. “Victoria?” he asks.

Alex frowns. “No, Alex. Are you sure you’re okay?”

A girlish giggle echoes from far away. 

Strand laughs. He shakes his head. “Yes. Yes, I’m fine.”

Alex gives him a doubtful look. “You really zoned out there. Ready to chase down that lead now?”

“Have you eaten?” Strand asks. “We should have lunch, before we go.”

Alex looks like she wants to check his forehead for a fever. “Okay, who are you and what have you done with the real Dr. Strand?” 

Her tone is light, but she searches his eyes.

He meets her gaze. He lets a smile pull at the corner of his mouth, trying to reassure her. “My treat.”

Alex’s eyes narrow, suspicious now. “Okay?”

She passes him by, stopping to hold the door open. She points at him as he goes through. “But I’m watching you, just in case you are, in fact, a pod person.”

Strand laughs. He follows her out to the car.

He isn't drifting anymore.

**Author's Note:**

> *Edited 7.28.17


End file.
